Feeding the young animals prior to weaning or during weaning, such as pigs while with the sow, or after the animal is recently weaned, is generally through delivering meal feeds, pellets, crumbles, milk replacers, wetted meals forming a paste, or gel feeds. In these prior approaches, the feeds do not provide nutrients in a form that can be fed in a single mass that is consumed over a period of time making the feeds difficult to handle. Also, some of these products are not readily consumed by the young pigs. For example, pellets may be difficult to consume due to their hard texture by the young animals. Gel or paste feeds may adhere to an animal's face and may add difficulties to cleaning pens where the animal is confined resulting in animal welfare issues. In addition, for wetted meal feeds or gel feeds sold to producers, moisture accounts for a large percentage of the weight of the feed, which makes purchasing such hydrated feeds unattractive due to the perception that the producer is paying for water. Further, where the producer adds water to hydrate meal feeds or gel feeds, the amount of liquid used may vary and may result in feed inconsistencies, which may result in the feed being unpalatable for animals. Feed waste is also greater with meal diets. While pigs may prefer high moisture diets (e.g. milk, gel) compared to dried diets during the pre-weaning and right after weaning periods, when not fed properly, the high moisture diets may cause difficulties in transitioning the animals to dry feed. Therefore, producers would benefit from additional animal feed products that ease the transition from sow's milk to dry feed, provide improved handling and reduce cost.
Further, with respect to young pigs, weaning presents many challenges to the animal, such as an abrupt change from a liquid to a solid diet and a new social structure. Combined, these effects disrupt feed and water intake (Dybkjaer et al., 2006; Varley and Stockill, 2001). These disruptions are associated with a lag in growth performance and an increase in morbidity and mortality in the nursery (Maxwell and Carter, 2001). Complex diets containing plasma protein, milk products, and other high quality ingredients have been used with some success to minimize this post-weaning lag (Maxwell and Carter, 2001). The physical form of the diet during the immediate post-weaning period has a large impact on voluntary feed intake.